I went on a knitting retreat

And I made this cool sweater (mostly) in four days! It's a new pattern by Nic Corrigan of the Machine Knit Community (it was an MKC retreat) - the Garnet Gansey. 

Everyone who makes this pattern (it will be available for purchase soonish) will post a photo of their armpit.

Because, as you can see, it has this cool gusset.

It helps with fit because this pattern is basically a bunch of rectangles. 

There are other interesting features. No ribbing is involved. 

However, you have to have your garter bar at the ready. By the end of this project I had become quite friendly with this tool. 

The lower edge of the sweater is a cute little roll of stockinette that is immediately tamed by a garter ridge. 

I am looking forward to cooler weather when I can actually wear this sweater.

It's made of luscious Koigu fingering weight yarn - from their "solids" collection. The colours are not actually solid though - they are wonderfully variegated. I chose the 4 colours from the "rust" group and I'm very happy with my choice. 

The venue for our retreat was the Walters Falls Inn near Owen Sound, Ontario. We had the entire hotel to ourselves from Sunday to Friday - in between weddings, I suspect. It was grand. Great food, comfy accommodations, nice scenery (it's near the Bruce Trail and I went for a walk each morning) and time spent with new and old knitting friends. 

On the last day, we visited the Koigu farm, which is just down the road, and do you know? They had yarn for sale! I think they did rather well from our group. Previously, I had two or three tiny skeins of Koigu in my "too good to use" stash. Now I have a lot more and some of it is seriously colourful because they specialize in wild variegation. 

I think some swatching is up next.